SkillsUSA is a partnership of students, teachers and industry representatives working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. SkillsUSA helps each student to excel. SkillsUSA is a national organization serving teachers and high school and college students who are preparing for careers in technical, skilled and service occupations, including health occupations and for further education. SkillsUSA was formerly known as VICA (the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America).
Membership:
SkillsUSA serves more than 370,000 students and instructors annually. This includes 20,500 instructors who join as professional members. Including alumni, SkillsUSA membership totals over 434,000. SkillsUSA has served more than 13.6 million annual members cumulatively since 1965.
Mission:
SkillsUSA empowers its members to become world-class workers, leaders and responsible American citizens. SkillsUSA improves the quality of our nation’s future skilled workforce through the development of Framework skills that include personal, workplace and technical skills grounded in academics.
Partners:
In 2019, more than 20,000 teachers and school administrators served as professional SkillsUSA members and advisors. Nearly 650 business, industry and labor sponsors actively support SkillsUSA at the national level through financial aid, in-kind contributions, and involvement of their people in SkillsUSA activities. Many more work directly with state associations and local chapters.
Programs:
SkillsUSA programs include local, state and national competitions in which students demonstrate occupational and leadership skills. At the annual national-level SkillsUSA Championships, more than 6,500 students compete in more than 100 occupational and leadership skill areas.
SkillsUSA programs also help to establish industry standards for job skill training in the lab and classroom, and promote community service. SkillsUSA is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and is cited as a “successful model of employer-driven youth development training program” by the U.S. Department of Labor.
- The SkillsUSA Work Force Ready System is a comprehensive tool to help students document entry-level skills as defined by industry and accepted by state education policy. The Work Force Ready System offers over 40 technical and employability assessments in 11 cluster areas.
- The Professional Development Program (PDP) teaches 76 workplace skill competencies in a series of hands-on self-paced lessons.
- The Career Skills Education Program (CSEP) contains 49 online lessons teaching basic employment and life skills to college/postsecondary students.
- Student2Student Mentoring gives high school students a chance to mentor younger students in the area of career development.
- CareerSafe is a credentialed 10-hour online training program developed in cooperation with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to provide students with basic knowledge of safety and a credential desired in the job market.